Berlusconi Denies Involement in CIA Kidnap

Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has issued an indignant statement denying any involvement in the disappearance of Egyptian imam Abu Omar who Italian prosecutors say was kidnapped from Milan by CIA agents in February 2003. “I ask myself, if not even the official denials are picked up and instead are hidden under a mountain of falsities, what must we do to get it across that we had nothing to do with the kidnap of Abu Omar?” Berlusconi’s statement reads.

“I repeat, for the umpteenth time, that the government was not involved in any way in the matter, neither myself, nor my ministers, nor my undersecretaries, nor any Italian institution were ever advised or informed by anyone at all. I deny most emphatically every false version of events and I reject with disdain every attempt to falsify the truth,” the statement concludes.